I grabbed Elsie by the elbow and walked with her back down the garden. “I think Mavis Clarke saw us. She was down by the beck, all sneering and know-it-all.”
Elsie laughed. “Well, Mavis Clarke can get knotted. Everyone knows she’s a troublemaker. Nobody would believe her even if she said something, which she won’t. I’ll make sure of it. Come on. You can show Aunt Annie the new photograph.”
The photograph of Elsie and the gnome was discussed at length over tea. The same speculation and questions from the adults, the same assertions from Elsie and me that it wasn’t a trick, that we had seen a gnome in the top field. The words scratched in my throat like a bad dose of the mumps, choking me with my lies. I watched Mummy from beneath my fringe, which was badly in need of a cut. She didn’t say much about the photograph. She was often quiet these days, her words squashed away by all the worry brimming inside her.
The rest of the month was given over to haymaking, an event I enjoyed immensely. I loved the musty smell of the freshly cut hay and the scent of the honeysuckle that threaded through the hedgerows beside the fields. I loved to hear the song of the mistle thrush that trilled until dusk as we worked, and I loved the jokes and laughter that took my mind off the knowing looks and snide comments from Mavis Clarke.
It pleased me to see Mummy and Aunt Polly with their sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a flush of red to their cheeks as they pitched forkfuls of the dry hay onto the cart. Mr. Snowden almost disappeared under the great flurries of straw tumbling down on him as the women encouraged each other to pitch faster, giddy in their exertions. I loved the swish and rustle as they worked, and laughed when the prongs of Aunt Polly’s pitchfork reached the seat of Mr. Snowden’s trousers, sending him hopping about like a madman. These were the days I loved the most. Being outside, working hard, doing our bit while the men were away. And after the day’s work, we sang songs of thanks for a bountiful harvest and the generous weather, and I fell into bed at night, too exhausted to dream or to worry about Daddy in France, far away from haymaking and the simple pleasures of country life.
By the time the last field was ploughed and the swallows had flown south, the two “fairy” photographs had been put away in a drawer, brought out only occasionally, when a relative came to visit. I was glad. I’d grown tired of talking about fairies and gnomes, tired of Uncle Arthur’s teasing, tired of pretending. With the changing seasons, my fairy friends had moved on, and although I sometimes overheard Mummy and Aunt Polly talking about the Theosophists and whether it might be possible that fairies did exist, for the most part, their interest faded and their talk returned to the more somber matters of war and the prospect of another Christmas without any sign of an end to it.
Life moved on, and my summer of fairies had come to an end.
Or so I thought.
Part Two
The Beginning of Fairies
Dear Miss Elsie Wright, I have seen the wonderful pictures of the fairies which you and your cousin Frances have taken, and I have not been so interested for a long time.
—LETTER FROM SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE TO ELSIE, JUNE 1920
Nine
Ireland. Present day.
The wild winds of May dissolved into the peaceful balm of June as Howth village exhaled beneath a bright sun that brought pale-faced office workers for weekend strolls and lured café tables and parasols outside to decorate the pavements. While the rhododendrons flourished beneath the better weather and longer days, Olivia felt herself wilt. Better weather and longer days meant that time was slipping by, and still she was no closer to solving the bookshop’s financial struggles. Bluebell Cottage had yet to sell and provide the much-needed injection of cash to settle the bookshop’s debts, and despite launching a new website and adding Pappy’s handwritten catalog to the site, the shop remained empty of customers and the books lingered on their shelves, stuck there, like the barnacles that clung to the hulls of the boats in the harbor.
As the fortunes of the bookshop hung in the balance, Olivia’s dreams intensified, taking her on curious nighttime meanderings toward woodland streams where a little girl offered her a white flower, and always, when she woke, she felt a strange sense of disquiet, a sense that something was unsettled. It left her restless and impatient.
And then there was Jack, and the wedding that moved ever closer in time, while she moved further away from it in her heart.
Twice now she had delayed her return to London. It wasn’t just a reluctance to abandon the bookshop and Nana. It was a reluctance to confront what was waiting for her there. Her thoughts swung daily from strident conviction that she couldn’t marry Jack to a reluctant acceptance that she had to. The plans had surely gone too far to back out now, and yet when she climbed to the top of Howth Head and looked out across the view, something told her that her plans hadn’t gone nearly far enough.
They’d had a couple of difficult conversations. Jack was exasperated by Olivia’s loyalty to the bookshop. He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just leave it to Henry Blake, or the solicitors, to sort out. He didn’t understand her emotional attachment to it at all. As far as he was concerned, she was reacting to her grandfather’s death and having perfectly normal pre-wedding jitters. He urged her to come home so they could talk about it like adults, but she flinched at the word home. London had never really felt like home. The poky little flat above the bookshop felt more like a home than any of the sleek west London apartments she’d lived in. She tried to explain herself in lengthy e-mails and frustrating conversations on the old rotary-dial phone in the shop but could never adequately express what she wanted to say. She deleted the latest attempt on her laptop and retreated to a rare edition of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. The words pricked at her conscience. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .”
AFTER AN AWKWARD first week, Ross Bailey, Writer, was firmly established “In Residence” at Something Old. He’d arrived on a rainy Monday with his laptop, a bottle of wine, a guitar, and a smile that could flip even the most troubled of hearts upside down and made Olivia wonder things she shouldn’t have been wondering.
“Okay,” she said. “I get the laptop and the wine, but . . . the guitar?”
“Never write without it. Helps me think when I’m stuck. If it gets annoying, just say.”
It wasn’t annoying at all. It turned out to be rather lovely.